Michael D. Meloan

Michael D. Meloan is coauthor of The Shroud.
 
It is the near future, and a genetic research team from the NIH is asked by the Vatican to use the latest findings of the Human Genome Project to shed new light on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. The lead researcher, Robert Strickland M.D., is an agnostic with spiritual leanings. But as the inquiry proceeds, it appears that this is indeed the burial cloth of the historical Jesus — and the vestment’s bloodstains open up the possibility of cloning. The ensuing investigative journey — from Washington D.C., to Israel, to Belize — has global repercussions, and transforms the lives of all involved.
 
The Shroud is an adventure novel in the vein of Carl Sagan’s Contact — exploring many of today’s news-making scientific, spiritual, and ethical questions. The story has no sectarian agenda. At bottom, the message is one of decoupling spirituality from religious dogma, while better exploring mystical and transcendent pursuits with cutting edge technology. The Shroud resonates with the works of Deepak Chopra, Michael Crichton, and Stephen Hawking.
 
Michael studied at the graduate level in Bio-Medical Engineering at USC, and was a Project Engineer at the Aerospace Corporation. His fiction has appeared in Wired, Buzz, LA Weekly, and in a number of anthologies.
 
He was an interview subject in the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This, and has collaborated with NPR monologue artist, Joe Frank, as well as having co-written a tech-thriller screenplay with actor Michael O’Keefe (Academy Award nominee for his work in The Great Santini, and recently seen in Michael Clayton).
 
Watch Staley, Climbin’ Around in the Bushes Again, and Haunted Boat Ride. View his Facebook page. Read his IMDb profile. Read his blog on The Huffington Post. Follow his Twitter feed.